The average gender pay gap across the largest tech and telecoms businesses in the UK is 18.6 per cent, an El Reg analysis of government stats has revealed.
That calculation was on the basis of the median hourly pay gap across 56 companies – so essentially comparing middle managers' earnings, rather than including the chief …

do women make better office managers?

Worthy of mention, I believe that women often make better office managers than men. Pay based on how good you are at your job should help skew women's pay scale upwards over men within that realm.

I have to wonder whether women also make better project managers for the same reason, when the goals are NOT to participate in doing the project, but to 'manage' the project. (in the case of participating in the project, I would say men and women are equal).

It may actually be a sex-based characteristic, something for which 2 X chromosomes do better than only one (or the lack of a Y chromosome, for that matter). It may be that women's instincts with herding small children are often effective in an office environment.

That being said, it's an area where, if women ARE more competent, they should be paid better for it (and hired more often).

But it also may suggest that women actually gravitate towards MIDDLE management, rather than UPPER, which would skew the apples/oranges wage comparison (this is pure speculation on my part, no facts to back it up).

After all, according to the article: "The gender pay gap does not compare the same job roles because it would be illegal to pay women with the same jobs less"

ACK to that. I wouldn't WANT to work for a company that based wages on anything OTHER than your value to the company, based ENTIRELY on job performance (etc.).

I'm not really sure what the aim of this exercise is. Can women in the tech industry now march into their boss' office and demand an 18.6% pay rise? Not really since even though the median pay may be lower that doesn't mean that one employee's is. Without any analysis into why there's a difference this seems rather pointless.

A very detailed analysis of the gender pay gap between Uber drivers was published recently and non of the reasons are what could be considered discriminatory.

This is the first phase in the push for that old chestnut: equal pay for 'equal value' work.

Which nobody has a problem with, assuming that it means that two people employed in the same job with equivalent training, experience, productivity etc get paid the same hourly rate regardless of sex, colour, religion, politics etc. Pretty much everybody is perfectly happy to back this.

However, equally most people would consider it fair when person A who works 60 hours a week gets paid 50% more than person B working 40 hours a week because most people would consider it to be taking the piss for person B to demand equal pay to person A if they are only doing half the hours.

Can women in the tech industry now march into their boss' office and demand an 18.6% pay rise? Not really since even though the median pay may be lower that doesn't mean that one employee's is.

Unlikely since the median experience level will be a LOT lower. My undergrad degree in the 90s had about 1-1.5% women on the course. I've only ever worked with two developers my age that were women. Being in the same role does not add the same value - experience makes a huge difference and is ultimately what the employer pays for.

My masters I did earlier this decade was still overwhelmingly male students, but had 10 times the rate of women than my undergrad course. Salaries shouldn't expect to be aligned until a generation of workers has gone through school, college, uni, and the workforce with a 50:50 split. Its mathematically impossible unless you pay women more than men just for being women.

I'm not suggesting women should be paid less, but the average male dev in my company has a lot more experience than the average female dev. Same role, different genders, and pay distortions that only exist if you ignore the number of years worked: the male devs with 5 years experience earn the same as the female devs with 5 years experience. The male devs with 25 years experience earn rather more than the male & female devs with 5 years experience.

"My undergrad degree in the 90s had about 1-1.5% women on the course. I've only ever worked with two developers my age that were women."

Sure, but about 50-70 years ago, you would have found that virtually all programmers were women, and if you look through all the programs on your computer today, in almost every case, the first example of that program was invented by a woman. Spreadsheets and music playing software were invented by men, and that is about it for male initial contributions.

Alternative history drivel..

@ katrinab

Well there you go, reinforcing the stupid woman who has not a clue about tech stereotype.

Over the last forty plus years I've been a programmer, thirty five professional , I've know two computer programmers from the '40's, both male. One was a grad student working for Mauchly. From the 1950's I've know dozens, all males. And since then about 95% of all programmers I've worked with have been male. That includes three decades working in the Valley. Many, many thousands of programmers in that sample. Covering the whole modern history of digital computer programming.

That is reality. Not the feminist puff piece journalism which seem to inform you.

Now what is true is that Computers, the people who operated mechanical calculators in the decades before digital computers, were overwhelmingly women. And the data entry operators/clerks you would have found in mainframe and mini-computer operations of the 1950's to 1980's were overwhelming women. But they were just one step up from secretaries and ledger clerks. They were not computer programmers.

As for origination of software. Compilers were invented by men. All but one of the important programming language were invented by men. Operating Systems were invented by men. Databases were invented by men. Word-processors were invented by men. Spreadsheets were invented by men. Image editors were invented by men. The WWW was invented by men. etc.etc.etc.

The reason why there are so few women in the development end of tech is because of decisions *they* make all through their life. At school. At college. In work. The *choose* to study the bio-sciences rather than the hard science. The *choose* once in the workforce to go into middle management rather than to stay in purely development roles. etc. etc. This has been over many decades.

So stop blaming men for the results of the decisions that women freely make. Not happy with the status quo? Its your fault. Not ours. The only result of the politicization of this subject over the last decade is that it will now makes it more difficult for woman to be accepted in the dev end of the tech world. In the past when a women came up for a dev position, which did nt happen very often, they were just treated as one of the guys. Assessed purely on technical merits and team fit. Now, given the huge amount of baggage that has become involved with hiring a woman, and the new legal and company risks they entail, I for one would be far more careful about hiring a woman for a dev position than I would ten or twenty years ago. In most cases its not just work the risk. To my career. Or to my employer.

Thats the way the real world works. Sorry if it does not fit into your ideological world view. Its unintended consequences. All the way down.

One thing all this feminist claptrap will never diminish. My enormous respect for Grace Hopper. One of the true giants of computer science. She really knew how to design a programming language.

Re: Alternative history drivel..

Thanks for linking to that Wikipedia article. It was most enlightening to learn that the electromechanical, binary Harvard Mark 1 was "based on" the mechanical, decimal analytical engine. I'm puzzled though, because the Wikipedia article for the Analytical Engine states:

"Howard Aiken, who built the quickly-obsoleted electromechanical calculator, the Harvard Mark I, between 1937 and 1945, praised Babbage's work likely as a way of enhancing his own stature, but knew nothing of the Analytical Engine's architecture during the construction of the Mark I, and considered his visit to the constructed portion of the Analytical Engine "the greatest disappointment of my life".[36] The Mark I showed no influence from the Analytical Engine and lacked the Analytical Engine's most prescient architectural feature, conditional branching."

Clearly the Analytical Engine article must have been written and edited by people with an ideological agenda to push, little knowledge of the subject matter, and no respect for historical fact.

This must be the case, because I can't imagine the "Women in Computing" article to be the inaccurate one, what reason would anyone have to distort that?

Re: Alternative history drivel..

I am not sure what relevance it has to the so called pay gap in the computer industry but I wa surprised by the assertions and decide to check: It is arguable none of claims are true, only two are even close.

Computer programming was invented by a woman.

I assume a reference to ADA lovelace but if thsi is taken it is very clear that Babbage was the first.

>Not True.

While most of the languages in use today were invented by men, they are based on earlier languages invented by women.

>Not true

Word processing, invented by a woman

>Not True

Operating systems, first invented by women

>Not true

Databases, invented by a woman

>Not true

Spreadsheets, yes, they were invented by a man

>True

WWW, that was invented by a man, but built upon earlier networking technologies invented by women.

>So vague as to be uncheckable

The first cross-platform browser, like the ones we use today, was invented by a woman.

The first cros splatform browser was written by a woman recruited and dorected by Tim Berners Lee to write a cross platform browser. I would say the invention was his.

>Not true but at least arguable

Overall none of the assertions are true most are not even arguable as being true.

Re: Alternative history drivel..

@ katrinab

The fact that you use that list of mostly obscure, subsidiary or totally irrelevant people as "proof" just reinforces how utterly ignorant you are about the business and its history.

Its only because I have been completely immersed in the business for four decades that I could even recognize about a dozen of the name on that list. In all cases I know exactly what their roles were in those projects / companies and in all cases none were vital to the success of those ventures. In fact only two or three could be considered principals. Most of the claims made for vast majority of those in the list, the ones I personally know or know of, are grossly overstated if not outright untrue. The rest is drivel.

The simple fact is that if one was to put together a list of the 1000 people who had the most impact on the development of computers / high tech / software both technical and business, over the last 70 years it would be about 950 plus men and maybe 50 women. Maybe. And not one single woman had a deciding influence on any single important technology or business.

Thats just the way it is. No matter what they might have taught you in your womens studies class. Because you obviously know nothing about tech.

And for the big finale, all HR depts are 90% plus women. And have been since the '80's. In fact the last time I remember dealing with a senior male HR person was right before the Loma Prieta earthquake. In 1989.

In very small companies the dev team is about 40%/50% of employees but quickly drops to less than 20% in small / mid size companies. And closer to 10%/15% in the big ones. So if you actually walk around real world high tech companies, around the corridors and cubicles, there are lots of women to be found. And always have been. But not doing the actual dev work. Just doing all the other work that is vital to making a successful company.

Re: Alternative history drivel..

I would actually probably prioritise a CV from a female applicant it is an unusual thing to see and I think the office would probably benefit from a better balance (assuming they are competent) . Our office is 100% male. We only have a small department of engineers (14) but in 15 years I must have seen some 150+cvs at various points. Of those only 3 have been from women. One was hired. The other two were from the same woman during different periods of recruitment but she didn't get an interview due to past criminal convictions.

In fact studies show that women are 3% more likely to get an interview when it is clear they are a woman on the CV than when the CVs are anonymised to remove age, class, racial and gender identification from them.

The biggest cause of gender pay gap is almost certainly the fact that women are more likely to take long career breaks. Normally once you get to say 10 years experience having 5 more is unlikely to be much more advantageous as the value of the older experience diminishes, but in the tech industry 5 years out may mean missing a whole generation of tech advancements that people aren't willing to waive.

There are of course all sorts of reasons why it tends to be the woman taking these long breaks but the fact that they happen is almost certainly one of the biggest reasons for the gender pay gap, and those that don't take the breaks do equally as well as their male counterparts.

The aim is to motivate companies to pay more attention to what they're doing, when they make decisions about staff promotions and retention.

Statistically, there's no argument that men, in aggregate, get more attention in these decisions. Of course every case is unique and there are always special circumstances; but it's also at least possible that there is some level of systemic bias.

But no one will ever detect or resolve that bias unless they look for it. This exercise gives them a reason to do that.

Imagine for a moment that 95% of tech was male 10 years ago and that women were broadly paid the same as men.

Something changes and more women start coming in to tech. The mean and median wage gap is going to stretch massively as there's a lot of young low paid women (although paid the same as their male colleagues) compared to high paid women.

Re: apples with oranges again

Re: apples with oranges again

"I don't know what the point of all this is, but something tells me it's quite sinister."

Yes. The sinister part is that some mainstream politicians are pushing an obvious canard as fact, and using ideology to do it, when everyday observation, common sense and even their own research indicates the contrary.

Even that Reg headline above is jumping on the mendacious bandwaggon. "Men paid ...more than women". The lie starts there. Tell the truth. Here's some: "Women earn less than men". See the difference?

Re: apples with oranges again

"Even that Reg headline above is jumping on the mendacious bandwaggon. "Men paid ...more than women". The lie starts there. Tell the truth. Here's some: "Women earn less than men". See the difference?"

Is anyone surprised? In recent years The Register's reporting has become more and more in line with that of a red-topped tabloid newspaper as time has gone on.

Re: apples with oranges again

RE: "In recent years The Register's reporting has become more and more in line with that of a red-topped tabloid"

Whats wrong? The sun style punning outrageous headlines and irreverent articles used to be a point of honour with most here. What changed? Its only good until it's about something you disagree intensely with?

Re: apples with oranges again

There's a reason for that, Wilseus. The Register switched much of its writing and focus over to Silicon Valley. It's not really British any longer. They kicked out Lewis Page for vague and unspecified reasons (but basically editorial policy) and they've been pushing a particular political angle ever since.

Re: apples with oranges again

I don't know what the point of all this is, but something tells me it's quite sinister.

It's designed to create outrage and divide people in a self perpetuating distraction from real important issues, such as the real disparity of wealth.

This creates an environment were we have working class people fighting working class people due to perceived sleights, while people who they should be focusing their attention at are eating watching the show from the sideline.

Yeah...

The solution is to fire a bunch of their female flight attendants, and male pilots and recruit male flight attendants and female pilots. That's totally legal and wouldn't get the company in a lot of trouble with the department of labour.

@AC

They did give some context (I quote): "The gender pay gap does not compare the same job roles because it would be illegal to pay women with the same jobs less, which can make it a contentious measure in some industries.".

The only problem is the narrow minded conclusion they drew. Basically all this article is saying that people working in different jobs get different paychecks. But because some of these people are women this is suddenly a very bad situation. Because "women" and then all the rules of logic need to be thrown out the window it seems.

Different jobs, different paychecks. I fail to see the problem. Especially if you keep in mind that this situation also happens amongst men and amongst women themselves.

So women should get higher paychecks because they're a woman and not because of the job their doing? And here I was thinking that the whole drive behind feminism was for women to be treated equally and more seriously. Like I said: I know plenty of men who make less money than their colleagues.

I come from a somewhat academic background, and while I'm not saying that I do or don't agree with his conclusions, I find his arguments and research basis appear far more thorough than any of these "Gender gap %" headlines I keep seeing on the majority of UK news sites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54&ab_channel=Channel4News

It's quite long (25 minutes), and it's not all relevant to the conversation - but a significant chunk of it is. FWIW, the interviewer did her job well too (IMHO).

Interviewing fail ...

Peterson does indeed provide a relatively unabashed but generally thorough presentation of the statistics without providing some over-varnished narrative, and being impressively clinical in avoiding making or being drawn in to invalid or unsupportable statements. In that respect this interview is well worth watching.

But I'd have to agree with T-A and make the same comment - Newman's interviewing was absolutely pathetic, relying solely on repeatedly picking a single item out of whatever Peterson had just talked about and replaying it as a question loosely bound with some or occasionally no correlation to the chosen contentious issue the C4 team wanted to exploit for clicks and giggles. So a statement like, "Being intelligent and conscientiousness is an indicator for success in the workplace", gets the question back of, "So you are saying that women aren't intelligent enough for the top jobs?" (19:13 in the interview).

This inequity of this interview becomes particularly obvious when Newman moves on to freedom of speech versus the right to offend people. For giggles, try 22:11 in the referenced video.

Re: Interviewing fail ...

This now famous interview/fatuous 'feminist' argument made a lot of people realise just how slanted a view the media take and how they manipulate. Somebody sent me this as a comedy spat fit for giggles, but I think a huge number of people recognised how much attempted bullying and misrepresentation was going on. Luckily Peterson, being vastly more intelligent and calm. put her very politely straight back in the box she managed to get out of (probably with a great deal of help for others including men) that morning.

You can see it on Cathy Newman's face when Peterson says something. She's looking for a way to repeat it back to him/make it simple for 'her' viewers and at the same time make it sound ridiculous. She was so arrogant she went completely over the top even for her, and that's resulted in a huge new audience for Peterson and his message. The sign of success for him was when his detractors couldn't find decent arguments against his reasoning and did the usual lazy (but effective) thing of branding him 'Right-Wing'.

We also have to realise the degree by which the media is controlled/directed by groups who have very little interest in the subjects being discussed or the quality of the arguments/entertainment, but must also be aware of their objective. Which is to divide people into smaller and smaller groups gathered around single issues, so that their noisy energies drown out sensible discourse about the real and serious problems facing the country/west/globe.

Re: Worthy cause...

Re: Worthy cause...

The figures may be a blunt instrument but they do tell us something; They tell us that men are earning more than women in the majority of the respondents, and that most people here are missing the implication which is that women are either paid less for the same job OR that men are dominating all the jobs that pay the best - which seems to demonstrate that women are not being given the same opportunities as men. The figures are not just about tech companies and cover a large range of company types so you cannot just toss off the old canard that men are more technically inclined. It seems constant across all company types. It doesn't surprise me. Men have dominated for so long and now women want to dominate a bit too. Why not?

Re: Worthy cause...

You make an unsupported leap when you say it demonstrates women are not given the same opportunities as men. This is your hypothesis, it's not something the data demonstrates. And what is more, we have a lot of reasons we know that contribute that don't depend on lack of opportunity. You're not only guessing the reason, you're also guessing where there are known reasons.

As to why not give women a turn to 'dominate', we're not rival football teams. We're individuals. NOTHING in this area should be determined on the basis of sex.

Re: Worthy cause...

> I'm sure most corporates would love to equalise pay between the genders ...

Most corporates already have, and most corporates also already have a strategy of aiming to hire the workers capable of delivering the required business outcomes on the lowest applicable market rates (whether they are men or women, foreign or domestic, young or old, etc).

On the whole pay in the UK is equal between men and women for equal or similar work already, and where it is identified as not being so, then the relevant employee tribunals and courts have had the power to apply penalties or make awards since 1970. That doesn't mean transgressions don't exist nor that some employee groups may try to play the system a bit (checkout versus warehouse, for example).

Re: Worthy cause...

> They tell us that men are earning more than women in the majority of the respondents, and that most people here are missing the implication which is that women are either paid less for the same job OR that men are dominating all the jobs that pay the best - which seems to demonstrate that women are not being given the same opportunities as men.

There's a distinct lack of effort to understand these figures in a lot of the press and a lot of the commentary. For example, try https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/public/assets/pdf/gender-pay-gap-explained.pdf where the bold, orange-highlighted block at the top of the page states quite helpfully, "The gender pay gap is not the same as unequal pay which is paying men and women differently for performing the same (or similar) work. Unequal pay has been unlawful since 1970."

and while everyone looks, argues and complains about the gender pay gap the real pay gap that causes the problems is conveniently ignored. Top v Bottom. I read a good point the other day about the people at the bottom. The people at the bottom (cleaners/fast food workers) get very low pay yet we as a society argue they should try or work harder and work their way up however someone ultimately has to do those jobs so really we are saying it's ok not to pay people a wage they can live off so those at the top can get more money.

Communist nonsense.

A cleaner simply isn't that valuable. They shouldn't get shit. If you want to live large then you actually need to earn it. This includes putting in the prep work required to make more money. Nobody owes you a damn thing.

The fact that a nurse gets paid less than a physician is just and good. It places the individual incentives where they need to be so that someone is there to save your sorry ass.

If you start shitting on those of us that have spent out entire adult lives working to do better, then we will stop and you will shit out of luck when it matters most.

Re: Communist nonsense.

i saw a cleaner the other week coming out of a building and jumping into his brand new Ferrari. I guess he was the boss of the cleaning company probably filling in for a staff member or something. I noticed the car there off and on for a few weeks and it was only there from 17:30 onwards it made sense when the guy in the cleaning company branded clothing opened it and put his cleaning stuff in and drove off. Not all cleaners, shop assistants, receptionists etc are poor or poorly paid, but yes most are.

Re: Communist nonsense.

@Geoffrey W

I'm neither I just think that if someone gets a job and works 40 hours a week then there should be a fair wage. Feel free to reward all the workers that strive for more with more, is it too much to ask that society is fair? We shouldn't be forcing those at the bottom into poverty because those at the top want more because there always has to be a bottom.

Re: Communist nonsense.

@AC "I'm neither..."

I wan't targeting you with my comment, it was more a general poke at most others in the whole comments thread. I actually agree with you wholeheartedly. In some areas, San Francisco for example, we seem to be descending into the Valhalla problem. Only heroes are allowed in Valhalla so who is going clean the toilets and feed them all? I imagine Valhalla to be full of muscly blokes, and blokesses, all jostling each other and being blustery and assertive to little effect...

"Hey! Stop pushing me around. I'm a Hero!"

"Stop pushing ME around! I'm a hero!"

On and on till they all starve to death or die from dirty toilets. Big hammers and flowing locks can't save you from everything. Ayn Rands have the same problem.

Re: Communist nonsense.

@Geoffrey W

That's the problem though, people just don't get it and when you suggest that the whole idea of society falls over when you look at it critically they call you a commie/Marxist, of which I am neither. I do like your analogy where is it from? or is it your own?

Re: Communist nonsense.

RE: "That's the problem though, people just don't get it and when you suggest that the whole idea of society falls over when you look at it critically they call you a commie/Marxist, of which I am neither. I do like your analogy where is it from? or is it your own?"

I'd like to claim it but it isn't mine. I got it from a friend. Where he got it from is anyone's guess. Not the internet coz he probably never switched on a computer in his life. It could be original to him coz it sounds like him, but he is an old school working class intellectual autodidact and might well have read it in a book.

Re: Communist nonsense.

In some areas, San Francisco for example, we seem to be descending into the Valhalla problem. Only heroes are allowed in Valhalla so who is going clean the toilets and feed them all?

It's a self-solving problem. If none of the service workers that are needed to operate a city can afford to live there, they commute; if they can't afford the cost of crossing the bridges and parking, they take BART (public transit); if they can't afford BART, a shortage of people to do those jobs forms, toilets go uncleaned, and those people who need toilets cleaned offer more money, and they keep offering more until they get the problem solved (or they do it themselves). The more money is offered for the service, the less the barriers like high rent or high commuting costs matter, and the greater the incentive for toilet cleaners to figure out a way to make it happen (or for their employers to do so for their own benefit).

Re: Communist nonsense.

Feel free to reward all the workers that strive for more with more, is it too much to ask that society is fair?

Yes, it is. Every attempt to make life more "fair" has only succeeded in the opposite. Reality is what it is; wishing things were different (even if you have legislative power to issue laws, which is distinctly different from being able to affect the change you want) doesn't make it so.

But even if it was not asking too much for society to be 'fair', whose definition of 'fair' do we want to use? Someone demanding that you pay a person three times what a service is actually worth isn't fair. If you want to pay the neighbor kid $20 to shovel the snow off your driveway, and he agrees to the deal, but some government official steps in and tells you that that's not acceptable, you have to pay him $60, 'cause they held a vote and decided that what you and the kid agreed to isn't enough, would that be 'fair?'

There's no such thing as something that is universal in terms of being "fair" or not. If you have something of little value that you want to sell because you are desperate, is it fair that you can't get much for it even though you really need the cash? If all you have to sell is a bag of apples, do you expect to get paid as if it were a bag of truffles because you really need the money? Would that be fair to the buyer, to be expected to pay more than something is actually worth in fair market value?

Re: Communist nonsense.

@Updraft102

"Every attempt to make life more "fair" has only succeeded in the opposite", you give me one example where someone has actually tried?

Also f*ck off with your whataboutism, you avoided the issue which is why should someone that works 40 hours a week not be entitled to even the most basic things in society? Roof/Food/Clothes/Utilities.

Don't kid yourself, the peasants and slaves of old had it better than some have it now.

Re: Communist nonsense.

Feel free to reward all the workers that strive for more with more, is it too much to ask that society is fair?

Whoever told you life was going to be fair? It isn't.

Some good people die young, some evil people live to a grand old age.

Bad stuff happens to good people, while rapists win the lottery.

Some people are confined to a wheel chair, while others sit in front of the TV the whole of theirs by choice.

The sooner we dispense with this horrendous notion of "fair" the better. What does fair even mean to you anyway?

Is it fair that just 10% of people pay 70% of income taxes? [1] I don't think that is very fair; everyone uses the services it pays for so should shoulder the burden equally. That would be fair.

Is it fair that some people are born pretty while some look like the back end of a donkey? Clearly they will experience different life chances, if only in terms of getting laid. Would you equalise that by assigning the pretty someone unfortunate looking that they have to bed once a month?

Is it fair that some people are born smarter than others? Do we equalize that by making the smart remain drunk such that their ability to reason becomes comparable?

I've no idea what you consider fair to be, and certainly can't even begin to see why you feel your definition of fair should be used above all others, or that life should be in any way fair. It isn't. And it isn't going to be. Get over it and play the hand you're dealt.

Re: Communist nonsense.

> A cleaner simply isn't that valuable.

A naive point of view which doesn't address the capitalist concepts of cost and value.

My wife and I buy back some of our personal time by paying someone to clean for a few hours each week. Our first, a lady who came with the house we bought, would be caught having long sit downs, skimped on the actual work done, came in late when she thought she could get away with it. Lazy, work-shy, dishonest and in need of watching.

Our current cleaner is as diligent, hard-working, honest, trustworthy and reliable a person you could ever hope to meet in any walk of life. She's cleaned for us, looked after the children's gerbils, taken in parcels and watched the meter readers in, sometimes chatted a long while then stayed longer to make up time, even came in to help us out while I was in hospital recently. She has never asked for a pay rise to the extent that I've bumped what we pay her by a third over the last three years voluntarily; I've offered more but she's turned it down.

Our first cleaner wouldn't be worth even the minimum wage. Our current cleaner will never be earning big money, but we pay her as much as she will accept and pay it gladly.

The people at the bottom (cleaners/fast food workers) get very low pay yet we as a society argue they should try or work harder and work their way up however someone ultimately has to do those jobs so really we are saying it's ok not to pay people a wage they can live off so those at the top can get more money.

I'm not clear on what evidence you've drawn such a conclusion.

Lots of the jobs at the bottom are getting automated (the McScreens, for instance). Society values academic qualifications, hard work, hours worked, and value adds. Those who bring less of those will typically hold a lower paying role, while those who bring more of them will typically hold a higher paying role. Obviously there are some large variations within that and probably a great many exceptions.

Roles requiring fewer skills and where experience is of little value (flipping burgers requires very little training or experience to get right at full commercial speed) will be unlikely to climb the comparative pay scale. Those where experience brings added value, and that require perpetual training or education will climb the payscale (IT, doctor etc).

I can increase my intelligence through education, and I can increase my strength via the gym, but I can't make myself look like a supermodel. It's one of the reasons pretty pays. Things that are harder to achieve accrue greater incomes - they always have and they always will. Why would it be any different?

Away with your communist nonsense crap, you still need the cleaner no matter what, why not pay them a living wage? Am I saying everyone should get the same? Not at all. However people shouldn't have to take out 2/3 jobs just to survive, that's the problem I'm getting at. While there are people who just inherit wealth, contribute nothing to society but take more money out at the expense of those at the bottom. If you work for 40 hours, you should be able to live off it and I'm not talking about any luxuries unless you class a roof over your head, food, clothes, the basics as luxury.

@LucreLout

As above without the communist comment. The point I'm getting as it's all well and good everyone bettering themselves which I agree with but you still need that cleaner.

Another point, what happens when all those jobs are automated? What do you think will happen? They won't have a choice but to gain skills then who joins the race to the bottom?

Away with your communist nonsense crap, you still need the cleaner no matter what, why not pay them a living wage?

Because a job is not a welfare benefit where your pay is based on what some other person thinks you need. When you work, you are selling your labor on the open market, and if the job you are performing has low value, you receive low pay. If you have far more people who have no marketable skills than there are job openings for them, the pay is going to be low, necessarily, and that's the situation that we find ourselves in. You're purchasing a service from the employee, and not all services are worth whatever you consider to be a living wage.

Trying to legislate the low pay away with minimum wage hikes doesn't help the unskilled poor. In the case of fast food jobs, it has led directly to replacement of human workers with robots, and once that genie is out of the bottle, it's not coming back. Robots never quit without warning, show up late, complain, or get sick.

For things that don't (yet) lend themselves to that level of automation, wage laws simply encourage employers to hire illegal workers (who won't complain to the authorities, given that they are not allowed to be working or present in the country in the first place). Where that doesn't happen, you get the perverse situation of employers only hiring overqualified individuals; if you have to pay $15 an hour for office cleaning, why not hire someone whose work history and skills (related to what the business actually does, if not his actual role within it) actually command $15 an hour, even though you're only going to be using them for cleaning? Why hire a $6 an hour worker for $15 an hour when you can hire a genuine $15 an hour worker? If their skills beyond cleaning are ever needed, which is a virtual certainty in time (attrition and what not), they are already part of the organization and ready to step up, whereas the person who can't do anything other than chase a vacuum around doesn't offer that possibility.

As long as there are large numbers of workers without skills, but only a relatively small number of jobs for them to do, this is always going to be a problem. You don't fix the problem of an oversupply of workers who can't do much of anything with legislation; that just pushes them even further to the margins. There are only a finite number of unskilled labor positions around, and as long as there are far more people who want those jobs than there are jobs, it's always going to be a miserable situation for someone in that position. The thing to do here would be to try to reduce the size of the pool of people who can't do much... demanding that the laws of supply and demand be waived doesn't work, and it never has.

Another point, what happens when all those jobs are automated? What do you think will happen? They won't have a choice but to gain skills then who joins the race to the bottom?

Sorry AC, but you seem to have fallen for the lump of labour fallacy. Google it and get reading.

People in automated roles are freed up to do other roles (you've noticed we need immigrants, right). They might be forced to upskill, which is never a bad thing. Those who could skill up but refuse and throw themselves on the scrap heap deserve not our pity but out robust condemnation. Those who cannot skill up deserve our help.

Sorry, but f***ing about at school all day instead of studying comes with a price - often a life long price. If society have sugar coated that message so much it is failing to get through, then we simply need to tax some of that sugar.

Misleading Statistic

"The gender pay gap does not compare the same job roles because it would be illegal to pay women with the same jobs less, which can make it a contentious measure in some industries." It is contentious in all industries.

Some information that gives a more rounded picture is that below 30 there is effectively no pay gap. It fluctuates with small differences one way or the other. The pay gap seems to appear at the point women become mothers. The statistics also show that Women with children reduce the numbers of hours worked and men with children increase the number of hours. Women on average work for fewer years than men.

The median pay of women part time workers is greater than male part time workers.

When economists control for all the relevant factors, experience, job, hours etc the difference between men and women more or less disappears.

Somehow this difference between men and women portrayed as a bad thing caused by discrimination against women when other differences such as that men work longer hours for more years, men die younger or many more men die at work are not seen as due to discrimination.

The evidence is that it is caused by different preferences betwene men and women mainly that women more frequently chose to support their family through time at home and reduced hours and men through working harder and longer to earn more. There are also differences in subjects studied and professions chosen.

The current focus on closing this gap is going to cause problems becaus eit ignores the underlying reality and causes. It may effect men or women badly depending on the route companies take to close it. When Birmingham city council lost a court case because they did not pay bin men and dinner ladies the same ( a ridiculous decision) they had a problem because nobody would work as bin men at the pay rate for dinner ladies and they could not afford to (over)pay dinner ladies the same as bin men. They solved it by outsourcing school meals. The outsourced suppliers did not have bin men so could not be taken to court for paying women less and they could pay the rate determined by the job market which naturally enough for a job with more convenient hours, inside and without high physical stress was less than a job outdoors in all weathers which was significantly more physically demanding. All good except the dinner ladies lost their council jobs and had to work for private contractors with less job security and benefits. In a similar way the pay gap is due to different numbers of men and women in different roles. the easiest way to fix it is simply to outsource the lower skill/pay jobs which bring down the median womens pay. An easy fix which is aligned with economic reality.

Re: Misleading Statistic

The easiest way to fix it, surely, is to get more men in low paid positions so as to bring the median number down? The actual number they are paid is irrelevant as long as more men are paid lower wages.

I actually think what you say is right. The outcome of this will (if pursued) be that men stay home with kids more, and take on some of the easier roles. This will force women to take on "harder" roles and stay at home with families less. Alternatively we'll all decide that, as a society, we prefer traditional roles. Either way would be great.

Most recent feminist/equality action has resulted in own goals from my perspective. As an example look at car insurance - a lot of women were surprised when men's insurance didn't drop but rather theirs went up to match it. In this case we'll see women having to work more hours in harder jobs for longer. Pension age will equalise for women, making them worse off again.

I for one am happy to share a long, stressful, underpaid, overworked career in IT with the ladies. Glad to have you on board :)

Re: We deserve it.

The pay gap is because there are more men in top jobs. This is nothing to do with paying women less, in fact, the pay gap, if you calculate it in the same way between men and women in late teens to mid 20's in in favor of women, yet we dont hear anything in the news about that.

The pay gap is a problem of the 80's and 90's of white men being at the top, once they retire/die out, the pay gap will naturally even out due to equality being a lot better in the 2000's and 2010's

As this article even says, its illegal to pay women less than men, so that is why these headlines are misleading.

Once the pay gap is even in 10-20 years, how about we then get down with real equality and have full paid paternity for men to be even with women. 3 days paid paternity is frankly pathetic, especially when men have to do huge amounts of work when their child is an infant, the stress isnt just on the mum, men have it bad too

Re: NEWSFLASH

For anyone who doesn't know how the gender wage gap myth works:

Person A - A male doctor who works 48 hours a week.

Person B - A female receptionist who works 36 hours a week.

The gender pay gap uses figures for the whole healthcare sector (instead of just similar jobs) to therefore claim women are discriminated against as they're being paid less. It's bullshit. This is the system working properly.

Re: NEWSFLASH

The calculation will certainly be for a male doctor on £47k doing a 48h week and comparing him to a caterer being paid £9/hour. In this case the doc earns £20.39/hour.

In reality that doctor will work 90 hours/week with no overtime pay £10.87/hour. That doctor will also be paying off £50k of student debt and will have worked for 7 years fewer due to education. I'm not saying that the doctor won't end up more wealthy, but we're not comparing eggs with eggs here. Salary and hourly will never be comparable. Did the "high paid IT staff" calculation involve the hours we all put in at home reading and training while not at work? Doubt it.

Re: NEWSFLASH

@Tigra "Person A - A male doctor who works 48 hours a week. Person B - A female receptionist who works 36 hours a week. The gender pay gap uses figures for the whole healthcare sector (instead of just similar jobs) to therefore claim women are discriminated against as they're being paid less. It's bullshit. This is the system working properly."

Another myth being peddled.

If there were as many female doctors as male doctors, then the gap should be minimal.

Ask yourself why not more female doctors? And don't say they don't want to be doctors so its their choice.

And if it did happen to be the case that women really didn't want to be doctors, then ask your self how it is that everything women do want to be just happens to be the worst paid jobs going. Doesn't seem likely to me. Seems more likely to be lack of opportunity or discouragement.

Re: NEWSFLASH

You can also look at nurse training, male student nurses are actively discriminated against by some female tutors, so fewer male nursing students qualify, further skewing the earning differential. That such tutors are employed by Universities as nursing is now a graduate career and they can get away with such discrimination illustrates perfectly how inequality isn't single sided, no matter how the feminists like to claim it is.

Re: NEWSFLASH

Re: NEWSFLASH

"If there were as many female doctors as male doctors, then the gap should be minimal"

Sorry to disappoint you, but i presented facts and you came here with opinions. There aren't as many female doctors as male doctors. It takes a lot of training and long working hours, neither of which most women commit to. Statistically women take more time off than men, take longer holidays, work less hours, and in less strenuous jobs (Why aren't there more female builders or warehouse/manual workers).

The figures take 1% of all staff in an industry and compare like for like. That doesn't work. The figures are comparing doctors, janitors, receptionist, etc, wages to see who's paid more. Who's at the top? Surgeons - likely to be male (high work loads, lots of stress, long working hours). Who's at the bottom? Receptionists and cleaners - more likely to be female (smaller work loads, lots less stress, flexible or part time working hours).

Re: NEWSFLASH

Re: NEWSFLASH

Funny thing - the nursing industry openly discriminates against men.

More importantly you're clearly missing something from your brain if you think nurses are just female doctors and here's the evidence of how different they are (at least in the US): https://www.nursepractitionerschools.com/faq/np-vs-doctor

"That calculation was on the basis of the median hourly pay gap across 56 companies – so essentially comparing middle managers' earnings, rather than including the chief exec or cleaners' rates."

Well, no. It excludes the CEO and it excludes one cleaner. Keeps the rest of them. As someone said above, it really does matter that there are more female cleaners than male ones, as this does drag down the median, unless all other women earn the same amount.

Re: Useless

Evidence is what the current topic of discussion is about. This report. Its evidence that women are paid less than men across the board. Not for similar jobs but for all jobs - i.e. women get all the shitty jobs, men get all the best jobs. Hence, a pay gap. Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm open to your logic if I'm wrong.

Re: Useless

" i.e. women get all the shitty jobs, men get all the best jobs. "

Which reflects the reality of market forces. Women are less desirable employees, especially when of child bearing age. You can make all the laws you like, but whilst employers - especially in small companies - have some freedom of choice thats not going to change anytime soon.

Re: Useless

RE: "Women are less desirable employees, especially when of child bearing age. "

So I guess that brings us back to where we were. Women better find a good wage earning man to look after her wide child bearing hips or she's fucked (not sure if there's a pun intended) if she wants to make it on her own. I wonder women still have anything to do with any of us when faced with attitudes like yours. It must be a sign of male superiority. GAK! No wonder you're anonymous. Bet your momma would love you...

Re: Useless

@Geoffrey W,

Like it or not, statistics work against women. Especially women of childbearing age as commented. For a simple a reason. A women at, say, age 20, MIGHT in the next few years, find a man, get pregnant and take maternity leave. Then she has a small child to take care of with all the things that involves (sick-days, doctors appointments, "couldn't get a nanny and the teachers are on strike", etc, etc. This means an employer runs the possible risk of having a less effective worker whom he still has to pay equal to a male counterpart that is statistically more likely to keep working even if he does get a new child. Like it or not, if you are an employer, hiring a young women is more risky than hiring a young man. Hence, when given choice between to roughly equal candidates the male will win out. If I were an employer I'd have reservations about hiring a young woman. Especially small struggling companies with only a handful of employees might well go under from having to pay several months of maternity leave.

Re: Useless

I look forward to taking a pay cut because a female graduate with the same job title with 0 years experience against my 20+ years demands to be paid the same, following our rationalisation of job titles.

Misleading information...

A man and a women in the same company, with the same job and working the same hours are required by UK law to be paid exactly the same.

And in almost every case they are.

However what this study has found is that men in higher positions in the company are earning more than women in lower positions.

But a man in that lower position would also be paid less. That's just the way business works, people with so-called more skilled/important jobs will earn more.

It's kind of like saying your shocked that a CEO is earning more than an intern.

However, what this study has found is that men tend to be in higher job positions.

Why this is the case has not been studied as such. As women work their way up the ladder they will earn more money.

The only time this becomes an issue is when they are deliberately prevented from climbing that ladder.

Over time this will remedy itself as more women are working and climbing.

What doesn't help is misleading articles. That and people expecting to walk into a company and take a very highly paid job right off the bat without any climbing or work.

My neighbours kid was like that, he wanted a senior server administration position with a 60k a year take home.

He was 30, never had any previous jobs and came straight out of uni believing he knew it all (But still didn't know what MacOS or Linux was).

I tried telling him he'd have to accept a junior position first and work his way up but he wouldn't budge and just kept telling me I've no idea what I'm talking about because I'm self taught and didn't attend uni.

So now he works in Starbucks making coffee and I run my own business.

Put bluntly, if you want a well paid job, you've really got to work for it and prove to your managers that you're worth a promotion.

But with all that said, there are a lot of work places where women are deliberately held back. And yes, that does need fixing.

Re: Misleading information...

"A man and a women in the same company, with the same job and working the same hours are required by UK law to be paid exactly the same."

Hence largely why salaries are confidential.

"And in almost every case they are."

bs. Just look at the many such instances at the BBC for instance. Women are in general cheaper / less valuable. If made to artificially pay them the same then people can fix that via the bonus / promotion / pay rise system. And if someone raised such an issue via say HR, then good luck getting a job anywhere else. It's a small world in tech.

I don't get the logic.

If it's easy for a company to ignore the equal pay law, which it appears to be if any of this is true, and if there is a deliberate intention to subvert that law and pay women less than men, which seems to be the acceptable face of conspiracy theory, and if that gender pay gap is in a range of 12% - 70%, Depending on which source you are taking as authorative,) and if women are provably just as good at any job as any man, despite there being so many less women in STEM roles...

Sooo...

Reading through the comments so far, I've seen women described as "trolly [sic] dollys", "feminists", "cleaners", studying "gender studies shite", and who have gaps in their working history because they took "time off to have kids". Not to mention "jihad against men" - that's just nuts.

Really? Some of you saddos should be ashamed of yourselves. If I read that crap on 4chan, I'd put it down to stupid teenagers. I had assumed most people on here were grownups but obviously not.

It's not hard to see how women are treated as second class citizens, if the thinking shown here is typical in industry...

Re: Sooo...

@LucreLout:"The point a lot of the posters are making with their poor use of language, however, has greater validity than their choice of words used to express it."

The underlying animosity displayed toward 50% of the population is the main problem.

The other problem is that quite a few are throwing up this straw (wo)man argument that "well of course cleaners should be paid less that CEOs" or "pilots should earn more than stewardesses". That's nonsense, and not what the equal pay argument is about.

If you're, say, a software developer doing the same work/same hours as your colleague in the next cubicle (who happens to have ovaries or any of the other recognised grounds for discrimination) you should both earn the same pay. End of.

I don't think that any woman would argue that they deserve positive discrimination, just a fair wage...

Re: Sooo...

"And they already ARE getting the same fair wage for doing the same work, and as the article points out, it has been illegal to do otherwise FOR OVER FOURTY YEARS."

It has always been legal to pay different people different amounts of money - that's the bit that happens at the end of your job interview. What's illegal is to pay a woman less _because she is a woman_.

Re: Sooo...

The other problem is that quite a few are throwing up this straw (wo)man argument that "well of course cleaners should be paid less that CEOs" or "pilots should earn more than stewardesses". That's nonsense, and not what the equal pay argument is about.

I agree, that is not what equal pay is about, but quite obviously it is responsible for some of the staistical distortions leading to Ryan Air having the largest gender pay gap, for instance. It is relevant to the thread.

A woman pilot of 20 years standing should always expect to earn the same pay as a male pilot of 20 years standing working the same hours for the same employer. A woman pilot of 10 years standing should no more expect to earn the same as a male pilot of 20 years standing as should a male pilot of 10 years standing expect to earn the same as a female pilot of 20 years standing. Experience counts, and ultimately is much of what employers pay for.

If you're, say, a software developer doing the same work/same hours as your colleague in the next cubicle (who happens to have ovaries or any of the other recognised grounds for discrimination) you should both earn the same pay. End of.

Only if you have the same qualifications and years of experience. Employers pay for these things and they always have - its nothing to do with gender. Equalise those facotrs and yes, both people should earn the same.

As an example, I have the same role as a number of my male colleagues, and we do substantially the same work, but because I have an extra decade of experience than they do, I get paid more. Quite a bit more in some cases. Such discrepancies are expected to arise within a gender and should be expected to equally hold water across genders.

Re: Sooo...

>Only if you have the same qualifications and years of experience. Employers pay for these things and they always have - its nothing to do with gender. Equalise those facotrs and yes, both people should earn the same.

You missed an important component of the pay equation - performance. If they have the same qualifications, experience *and* perform to the same levels, they should get the same money. The better performing employee would usually get promotion into a new opportunity, but this isn't always possible in smaller companies without someone more senior leaving.

Re: Sooo...

Re: Sooo...

Get over yourself.

This is about CLASS and not gender.

A female oncologist is as elite as anyone else. A nurse or cleaner is not. Each of those women made their own personal choices and is now living with them. The consequences here were never a mystery. NO ONE deserves a pity party over this stuff. They certainly don't deserve one just because of their genitalia. THAT is the opposite of equality.

Re: Sooo...

"The other problem is that quite a few are throwing up this straw (wo)man argument that "well of course cleaners should be paid less that CEOs" or "pilots should earn more than stewardesses". That's nonsense, and not what the equal pay argument is about."

Actually, that's exactly what this is about. These figures are for all men and all women in a work place. The correct response to this isn't "pay women more", like some people have said, but "more female pilots".

For this to actually work though, you might have to do something about the motherhood issue. It's not being a woman that causes you to earn less, it's being a mother.

Re: Sooo...

"It's not being a woman that causes you to earn less, it's being a mother."

The specifically "mother" part of being a parent doesn't keep you out of the work-force for very long. Perhaps you should try substituting "father" or "parent" into that statement. It probably *is* true that those without children (or who are just crap parents who never see their kids) get on better in their careers, but I'm not sure I feel comfortable recommending crap parenting to fix our social problems.

The earlier suggestion about equalising maternity and paternity rights is probably the way forward. Women then take shorter career breaks. Men start taking career breaks. Employers no longer have any reason to discriminate by sex. Mothers get out more and stay sane. Fathers get stuck in more and learn why their wives are going a bit doo-lally. Kids get a more diverse up-bringing. I see no down-side. Those men who don't want to play can learn how to use a condom.

Re: Sooo...

"If you're, say, a software developer doing the same work/same hours as your colleague in the next cubicle (who happens to have ovaries or any of the other recognised grounds for discrimination) you should both earn the same pay."

You seem to have missed several posts pointing out that as that's the law it is actually the case. Maybe you missed it because it wasn't stated in sufficiently colourful language for you to complain about.

Re: Sooo...

"The point a lot of the posters are making with their poor use of language, however, has greater validity than their choice of words used to express it."

As and when they manage to find the words, I look forward to giving their point the consideration it deserves. In the meantime, I hope they won't be offended if I judge them according to what they've actually said so far. Respect is like pay; you've got to earn it.

Re: Sooo...

Reading through the comments so far, I've seen women described as "trolly [sic] dollys", "feminists", "cleaners", studying "gender studies shite", and who have gaps in their working history because they took "time off to have kids". Not to mention "jihad against men" - that's just nuts.

Really? Some of you saddos should be ashamed of yourselves. If I read that crap on 4chan, I'd put it down to stupid teenagers. I had assumed most people on here were grownups but obviously not.

Really? You saddo White-Knight Syndrome suffers should be ashamed of yourselves. If I read this crap in the Guardian or MotherJones or Counterpunch I would put it down to teenage SJW's trying to impress the feminist they would like to get some extra-curricula activity with.

You really have never seen a female cleaner? or a female feminist? or know of any woman taking time off to have children? Maybe you should get out more, once you have grown up.

Re: Sooo...

@Redstone:"Really? You saddo White-Knight Syndrome suffers should be ashamed of yourselves. If I read this crap in the Guardian or MotherJones or Counterpunch I would put it down to teenage SJW's trying to impress the feminist they would like to get some extra-curricula activity with.

You really have never seen a female cleaner? or a female feminist? or know of any woman taking time off to have children? Maybe you should get out more, once you have grown up."

Funny that you can't defend your position, but instead you go on the offensive.

If you ever grow up and find a woman desperate enough to enter into a relationship with you (or God forbid you somehow manage to reproduce), you might not find it so great that your wife or daughters are paid less than their male colleagues for the job they do.

Re: Sooo...

Funny that you can't defend your position, but instead you go on the offensive.

Says the guy who started out on the offensive and can't defend their own position, which is apparently that womyn should be paid more simply because of their anatomy. Personally, I think people of any description should be paid according to experience and how well they do their work.

you might not find it so great that your wife or daughters are paid less than their male colleagues for the job they do.

Thank you so much for your concern, but my wife is quite capable of negotiating her own way in the world without the help of a White Knight and has never been paid less than her male colleagues. My daughter already takes responsibility for herself without blaming the dreaded 'Patriarchy' for her own failures.

If you want to see a sexist, look in the mirror. It isn't me that thinks women are so feeble they can't succeed without my ‘magnanimous aid’.

Re: Sooo...

@Redstone: You seem to be a very angry person. I doubt very much that you have either a wife or a daughter. If you did, you wouldn't see equal pay as a way for you to get your panties in a bunch about feminism.

I've defended my position in the comments already - it's so simple even you could understand: same work, same pay...

Re: Sooo...

@Snorlax: Says the guy who started out with an angry comment. Wow, you have a planetary sized ego to think I care that doubt my familial setup.

As for your own position, I get it – it’s the standard feminist position: because a woman has female anatomy she should get the same or greater pay as a man, regardless of experience, performance, hours worked etc.

Do you ever get blinded by the luminosity of your own virtue as it reflects back from the smug-cloud you live in?

Re: Sooo...

@Redstone: I've met some dense motherfuckers in my time but you take the biscuit.

Your philosophy seems to be 'everybody for themselves'. I don't see why the thought of same work/same pay gets you so wound up. To be honest I don't care for an explanation cos it would just be more of the same boring crap.

You're such a cliche moaning about 'white knights', 'SJWs', and 'patriarchy' with no sign of intelligence whatsoever. The only thing you left out was a 'libtard' accusation...

By the way, what are your thoughts on blacks, Jews or the disabled earning a comparable wage to you?

Re: Sooo...

Really? You saddo White-Knight Syndrome suffers should be ashamed of yourselves.

Snorlax and I disagree on almost everything and we plainly don't get on, but characterising him/her as white knighting seems excessive. I don't think anyone realistically expects there not to be a maternity gap - it influences experience, which is primarily what employers pay for.

Snorlax objection to some of the language used seems fair to me. Yes there are female cleaners, most of them I'd agree, and most CEOs are old men, but in the context of the whole thread, some of the language used isn't reasonable and must be off-putting to women reading it.

And no, you don't need to worry about me trying to get with any feminists - I'm happily married and too smart to fool around, but I'd not be happy to have my wife or daughter described as having a jihad against men. In fact, I'd be unhappy enough to insist upon an apology.

Re: Sooo...

@tip pc: There are 39 comments to this article so far. It would probably be more enlightening for you to read from the top of the page rather than having me provide a digest of the comments. It should take you 5 or 10 minutes to read them all...

Re: Sooo...

i've read them all, your just cherry picking phrases out of context and using them to further your agenda, regardless of the initial intent of the words used.

what you have failed to understand is that the so called "pay gap" does not compare like for like and effectively hi-lights the ratio of men to women in different jobs within business.

Its a fact that many women in 2 parent households give up work, work less hours or work less demanding jobs when they become mums mainly so that they can care for kids outside of school hours. Many single parents resort to after school clubs etc to fill the gap at extra expense.

I'd give up work too and look after the kids if my other half earn't enough to cover the my loss of salary.

Re: Sooo...

Ignoring the appellations, the "taking time off for kids" is a real factor in the pay difference. If you are 40 years old and have worked for ten years you will yes will have lower pay than somebody 40 years old who has worked for 20 years doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same job, regardless of why you have have worked less. Just as if you work 10-3 you will yes get paid less than somebody who works doing exactly the same 9-5. And as one of the touted "solutions" is "more work flexibility", then that will just excaberate the pay gap. If you take more and more advantange of flexible working to work less and less hours you WILL end up with a pay gap between yourself and somebody who does not take advantage of flexible working to work less.

I know what the pay gap is like. After getting fed up of starving I took a minimum wage job in local government for ten years. Should I expect to be paid the same in a development job at the age of 50 with 20 years gap in paid development work as somebody who has been continously in paid work for 30 years?

Re: Sooo...

If you are 40 years old and have worked for ten years you will yes will have lower pay than somebody 40 years old who has worked for 20 years doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same job, regardless of why you have have worked less. Just as if you work 10-3 you will yes get paid less than somebody who works doing exactly the same 9-5. And as one of the touted "solutions" is "more work flexibility", then that will just excaberate the pay gap. If you take more and more advantange of flexible working to work less and less hours you WILL end up with a pay gap between yourself and somebody who does not take advantage of flexible working to work less.

Totally agree - I'd just add that there's more to flexible working than number of hours worked - I get to WFH up to one day a week (mine tend to bunch up a little so I'm in the office all week most weeks), and I get to move my start and finish time about around some core hours.

Re: Oh please

Re: Oh please

All most kind but I fear I'm a touch unfashionable under the current editorial dispensation.

If I were to write here on this I'd add in these three facts:

1) We only need two numbers to explain all of the observed gender earnings gap. Mothers make less than non-mothers among women (about 9% for the first child, lesser extra amounts for each subsequent). On average, of course, with all these numbers. Fathers make more than non-fathers among men, about 8% or so. Yes, always controlling for all other factors like age, education and so on.

Sexually dimorphic species - one that started out as hunter gatherers with sexual division of labour - has division of labour in child rearing. Really?

2) The stat being used is of all men and women, part and full time, within each company. Back a decade Harriet Harman and the Fawcett Society started bandying about the pay gap of this unadjusted form, part and full timers together. The Statistics Authority, in the form of Sir Michael Scholar, wrote an open letter insisting they stop. To blend in this manner was extremely misleading and more likely to confuse than inform. One can and should use part time to part time, full time to full time. So, we then get a law insisting reporting is done in the misleading manner, do we?

3) Consider what must be true if this is about discrimination. Women are cheap compared to their skills, talents and output. It is therefore possible to make a fortune by discriminating in favour of hiring that cheaper female talent. Dame Steve did exactly this in the 60s and did make that fortune. No one is doing this today. We must therefore conclude that it isn't about discrimination, even that women are not being underpaid for their output.

Then, the bit in the next comment about women who might have children but don't getting lower pay. Actually (and this is just the way the stat was collected) never married childless women in their 40s enjoy a - small to be sure, 1 or 2% - pay premium over the average male. Lesbians do too, presumably something to do with the lower incidence of children. Interestingly, gay men have a pay gap against them in reference to hetero men. Quite possibly that influence of being or not a father affecting the averages.

Give it a bit more time and we'll have a really interesting piece of research that can be done. Same sex coupledom is clearly becoming more common, as is such same sex couples having children. We will therefore be able to study a population where gender (or even sex) is divorced from primary child carer entirely. Be great fun to see what the pay gap is then.

My bet is that primary child carers would face about the same gap as women do today. Meaning that the gap is about primary child carers nowt else. But then we all do hope for confirmation in the future of our own assertions today, don't we?

Re: Oh please

Re: Oh please

Tim along with 97% of commenters here to date have missed the entire point of the article.

The moment a person is conceived, the statistical likelihood of their achieving a salary above the median is already determined.

Commenters are entirely correct to point out that time off from work for having children has a large impact on the pay gap. They’re wrong to say that is fine - not because women should get paid the same as men with more experience. That’s unlawful and unhelpful.

Women of child bearing age are less likely to be promoted when in competition with an equally qualified man. The woman might go off to have kids, and then you need to fill that position. You want stability in that management role. But what if she doesn’t want kids? Can’t even have kids? It doesn’t matter - businesses see risk, and prefer the male over the female.

We can all see that it seems a sensible decision. It’s also unlawful. The problem is it’s very hard to stop.

It will get very slightly better in the U.K. since the change to shared parental leave, but that will take decades to truly filter through. Until then, women will find it more difficult to get into higher management roles on average. That is the issue here - women systematically discriminated against in their access to high paid jobs.

Society needs new people. That’s how pensions get paid. No new people = stock market implodes = bye bye pension. Given that men physically can’t bear children, women have to do it. Should they be punished for that capacity?

Re: Oh please

Or, a 18.6% paycut for men due to "Legislative requirements *shrug*. Sorry" or, better still, only have female employees and save your company 18.6% in salaries each year. Nice.

It's all utter crap anyway; the ONS itself takes age range into consideration and it can be seen there that women under 30 tend to earn more than men across the board, whereas the largest gap is seen in comparing women and men over 50, where the gap is indeed substantially in favour of men. Now, why would that be? Could it possibly be that newer contracts follow the equal pay legislation that exists whereas the older contracts don't? Oh, what a shock!

These headline grabbing stats are highly manipulated. They ignore sector, age range, contracts, legislation and all sorts of other factors. Indeed, in some cases the biggest "gaps" are found by comparing part-time, low skill, female workers over the age of fifty against young, highly skilled, professional full-time+ male roles. Guess what? if you compare Mrs. Part-Time tea lady to Mr. CEO of Big Pharma, you get a big difference! Another shock!

Anyway, if we are going to uplift women who earn less then men are we also going to uplift men who earn less than men or women? No? Why not?

What do these idiots actually want?

My current FTSE client's CEO is a woman. My former employer's UK CEO was a woman, as was the departmental director.

My MP is a woman. My GP is a woman. The PM is a woman. The Home Secretary is a woman. The DPP is (for now at least) a woman. The Queen is a woman. I could go on...

What do these people want? Not equal representation in the fields of bin collection, roofing, fishing, highway maintenance, commercial diving, or working in steel, oil, powerlines and mines, that's for sure.

Oh, and with the exception of the Queen, all of these women have IMO performed atrociously, and could easily be replaced a sack of spuds without ill effect.

That said, I have worked with many extremely effective women, and none of them complain about gender pay gaps or need to be turned into victims by barmy feminists.

Re: What do these idiots actually want?

Fix BT, Evil Matriarchy

I look forward to The Guardian headline article on "How to Fix BT" so that men are paid as much as women. Or the article about "Women Discriminated Against in Deep Sea Diving". I won't hold my breath, though!

That rag has gone mental in the past few days, advising me that my company (search available) effectively stops paying women in November. I mean, for God's sake, Postman Pat could do statistics better than that,

A Case Study in how a single KPI can mislead

(oh yeah and stuff like building your own servers to run VMware farms so your knowledge advances)

I don't like the Trumpian 'Fake News' shtick but mindless repetition of non-analysed reports do journalism no favours.

Equal opportunity for all should not really be open to question or debate and that should be focused on.

Take pilots for example, the main reason there are so few female pilots is down to women themselves, they either are not motivated to be pilots or think they can't be one. there is not one airline (religion excepted) that would refuse any application (you might need £35,000 of course) given the need for pilots in the future.

It probably comes down to role models but doesn't that reveal a lack of vision in the person themselves?

you might need £35,000

... and to pass, of course.

This is the real reason so few people opt to become commercial pilots, You pay a phenomenal amount (35 grand is low) to train, and you have to support yourself in the meantime, and if you don't pass you lose it all.

why not....

Look at things like pay grades? Most if not all large companies have a grading system so irrespective of the men/women ratio is the averages can be worked out by comparing jobs of equivalence even if they aren't directly comparable jobs.

Re: why not....

No company I have ever worked for has had a published grading system. I would like to see all pay rates published, as at the moment the employer knows what everyone is paid but no-one else does. I believe that's the way they do it in some Scandinavian countries.

Re: why not....

No company I have ever worked for has had a published grading system. I would like to see all pay rates published, as at the moment the employer knows what everyone is paid but no-one else does. I believe that's the way they do it in some Scandinavian countries.

I wouldn't like to see it. My pay is my business, not my colleagues.

Knowing that I earn more than most of my colleagues won't enhance their lives, but will lead to jealousy and inevitable shrieking for my salary - I've seen it happen once before when an outgoing boss got drunk and dropped a bombshell at his leaving drinks. In another 5 or 10 years, when they have the same exprience I have now, they'll be earning what I earn, maybe more, and they'll understand the reasons for it, but not today. Not today.

Re: why not....

> I wouldn't like to see it. My pay is my business, not my colleagues.

That's mostly a cultural perspective though - there are valid arguments to be made about whether pay is published or not, whether collective bargaining is valid or not, etc. Personally I am also more comfortable with my pay being private. I'm actually less comfortable with the fact that discussing my pay with a colleague is deemed misconduct in our company.

This is an interesting read on the topic of transparency on pay (jury still out I suspect):

Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

A lot of the IT gender pay grade differential seems to me to be down to fewer women in better paid roles, due to fewer women training for those roles *and* fewer women who do train for those roles being welcomed.

In my experience the fewer female workers were ecouraged and promoted by employers when productive, but because it is an overhwhelmingly male industry then there is a culture of sexism that has actually got worse over the past thirty years that is discouraging to females.

Re: Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

IT isn't "sexist". It's a brutal meritocracy. This is especially true for places like Silicon Valley. A lot of guys can't cut it and do little more than occupy space. They would quickly get ejected from a high demand IT environment.

Women self select against IT for painfully obvious reasons that have nothing to do with this "sexism" narrative. HELL, this sexism narrative is one of the things keeping them away. It takes what little supply there might be and reduces it even further.

The smart ones gravitate towards jobs with better pay and more respect. They gravitate towards professions that are glamorized by our culture rather than shat upon by it. This should not be a shocking result.

Re: Self selection and poor selection for better paid roles

Any gender imbalanced working environment is sexist, as explained by Gorky.

26 Men and a Girl

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TwenSix.shtml

And you know he was correct because he had a park named after him, and someone made a movie about the park.

I'm confused by you stating IT is a brutal meritocracy while admitting a lot of guys only occupy space. If it was a genuine brutal meritocracy then those male space occupiers would be cut, and I suggest many of them would be replaced with more competent females. My contention is IT is largely an idiocracy. In the 1980s and 1990s a whole wheen of incompetents were attracted in to a profession they have no skill or aptitude for, and have now risen to management positions.

Worse, even many of the genuinely talented engineers and programmers have poor "man"-management skills.

This is the wrong measurement

I would like to see a comparison of three things :

1) People who do their work task by task vs. people who do their work and brag about every single thing they do each time they do something.

I believe wholeheartedly that if you were to do this research, you'll find that the gender gap shrinks considerably. Men or women who spend less time working and more time bragging about how important their contributions to the company are get paid a great deal more.

2) People who climb ladders actively vs. those who work and expect to be rewarded fairly.

You'll find that people who "make themselves seem important" and then actively create bidding wars for them are paid far better than people who don't.

And most importantly....

3) Height and voice depth

I'm absolutely convinced that you'll find that taller people (regardless of gender) are paid more. Women of course can equalize this by wearing heels, but when heels are past a certain point, then end up looking cheap and desperate. There is only so much they can do here. Of course, man or woman, keeping a small waistline will exaggerate the appearance of their height, so living as a vegan or an anorexic can even the odds here.

Of course, voice depth means a lot. Listen to a man or woman with a higher pitched voice vs. a deeper voice. You'll likely find that the deeper the person's voice, the more serious and important they seem. This is true until such time as a voice becomes so deep that no one can understand it.

Consider that someone listing their accomplishments in baritone sounds confident. Listing your accomplishments in soprano sounds like whining. I think you'll find that women who have an alto voice will consistently perform better than those who speak with a soprano.

Bonus) Accents

The more "educated" a dialect and vocabulary, the higher a person will be paid. Using larger and more advanced word appropriately with a more distinguished/professor-like pronunciation, the more people will earn.

Many of these things can be faked, but the "faking it" takes time, effort and also talent to get right. If you look like you're faking any of them, you won't be taken seriously and people who see you as being weak and worth less instead. So 4.5" heels on a woman can be natural if their foot is proportionately large enough. 5" heels look like a secretary trying to show her legs. Same as men and shoes. Raised heels inside a shoe can't be more than a CM or two max. Elongating a mans legs to look "feminine" by adding 3 or 4cm makes the man appear submissive. The goal is to achieve dominance through appearance and elocution while not appearing as though attempting to do so.

I am in a top working class salary bracket. I make a lot more than nearly every woman in the company (and there are A LOT of them) and have managed a senior level position. I have completely wrecked the averages because it would take A LOT of women to make the average lean back towards them. I achieved this through a combination of dedication to my work as well as marketing myself wisely. My salary will most likely not increase drastically again relative to inflation as I've reached my pay ceiling for my skills and comfort level in "pimping/whoring myself out". In fact, my goal is to achieve 5 years in this bracket before I start seeing a decline without a major shift in strategy.

Let's research the real issues and unfortunately learn that some people actually achieve higher pay by manipulating their physical appearance to be paid more.

Is this about equality or supremacy?

Back in the day, the days of true feminism, the whole morale was women who demanded equality. Being allowed to participate in and/or compete with the same things men did. Quite frankly a goal which most people wholeheartedly agreed with. Let's be honest here: in the general sense of the word women were being oppressed to a certain degree. I mean... not being allowed to vote in the US around the 60's? How does that add up?

But haven't we long passed this stage already? Women are here, women are accepted and we do get a diverse working environment. Women aren't only secretaries these days but also work in tech, as managers, and even as officially recognized athletes.

This is when we get to what I perceive as "modern feminism". Women who suddenly feel entitled to certain things because... well, they're a woman so because. Take this poor excuse of an article for example:

"The gender pay gap does not compare the same job roles because it would be illegal to pay women with the same jobs less, which can make it a contentious measure in some industries."

This line alone sets the whole tone of the article for me, and it's also why I call this a dimwitted article. First the most obvious: just because it would be illegal doesn't mean that it can't happen. That would be an honestly interesting subject, one which I being a massive critic of "modern feminism" would even fully support. But we're not going to do that because... I suppose no one breaks the law?

Yet this also means that we're now basically comparing different genders and different jobs. We now have 2 unknown variables and every mathematician can tell you that this makes it impossible to draw solid conclusions from that.

But in true modern feminist fashion the lack of consistency and logic doesn't seem to stop the writer at all from drawing their far fetched conclusions and pushing this as some kind of twisted truth. Even worse: it also showcases a massive double agenda here. I mean....

"BT was the only company to pay women more than men, paying them 2.3 per cent above their male counterparts' hourly median rate."

So, translation: when men get paid less than women it's perfectly fine because "reasons". But when the suspicion arises that women get paid less than men then there's a massive problem to address. Whatever happened to that sense of equality all of a sudden? Does the author even understand what equality actually stands for? Because I have my doubts about that to be honest.

"Ryanair topped the charts as one of the worst-performing companies, paying women 71.8 per cent less than men."

Based on what exactly? See, I see the author spout of a bunch of statistical conclusions while not even trying to back those up with any actual facts. I say that because of the line I quoted earlier: the article highlights the paycheck of different genders performing different jobs.

Wake up call: if you perform a different job you often get paid a different salary. That isn't something which only happens to women in comparison to men, it also happens if you compare 2 men doing different jobs or 2 women doing different jobs. But that would obviously not make for a compelling article so we'll simply ignore that fact and focus on the conclusion which we want to push forward: Women get paid less than men! (for doing different jobs and something you also see amongst men but we're not telling you this).

C'mon El Reg... I expect much higher standards from you than this bullshit half-truth sharing article.

Re: Is this about equality or supremacy?

Exactly.

The results of this survey aren't about "better" or "worse", they are about identifying differences. For the author to include statements like "Ryanair topped the charts as one of the worst-performing companies..." and the page URL to be ".../capita_has_worst_gender_pay_gap_at_425_per_cent" is disingenuous at best and wilfully misleading at worst.

@AC

"Kat Hall should be ashamed of her evident bias.

I suppose we'll have to make allowances as she's a woman ;)"

Sorry but this is just as bad as that bullshit modern feminist crap.

The author may be a woman, she may have her bias, but that is not something to criticize her for, and it's also not something I'm doing in my post above. My disdain comes solely from the "El Reg analysis". See: they share conclusions without sharing the data they based the conclusions on. While also making it perfectly clear that their conclusions are flawed because they look at a scenario where different genders perform different jobs.

I'll make this more obvious: In a hospital surgeons normally earn a lot more money than other jobs within the same hospital. So if a hospital has 3 male surgeons and 5 female nurses.... Do the women earn a lot less than man or do surgeons simply earn more than other hospital jobs? According to this article this would be a classic example of women earning less than man. And it's obviously an outrage otherwise they wouldn't spent a whole article over it.

That is why I wrote the above. Not because the author happens to be a woman (I wasn't even aware until you pointed this out) but because I think they're doing a piss poor job. El Reg usually bites the hand that feeds IT, meaning they criticise and reflect on things. They throw facts back at companies.

But there isn't one single solid fact in this whole article, despite what the author tries to make us believe. And that's why I think this article is extremely poor and the author did a poor job.

But Ms. Hall has no reason to be ashamed of her bias. The El Reg editor though should have done his job, done some solid fact tracking and then have denied this article to be placed because of all the loose ends and loopholes. Not to mention the push of an agenda. They should have told Ms. Hall that this isn't the kind of article worthy of El Reg.

Those editors have something to be ashamed off. But not Ms. Hall. I may not agree with her conclusions, I may think she wrote a poor article, but that doesn't mean she should be ashamed for her apparent opinion. In fact, I think it's a good thing she apparently stands up for what she believes in. But I also believe El Reg is not the right place for that.

Re: @AC

"The El Reg editor though should have done his job"

The fact you can safely assume the El Reg editor is a male kind of proves the point of the article. You think you are not sexist because the stupid female journalist should have been corrected by the assumed to be male editor.

Re: @AC

Re: @AC

Now you're making assumptions. It's just as likely that the previous poster assumed the editor male because they believe female editors are more thorough and wouldn't have made the mistake. Anyone can play the game of assuming other people's intentions based on what they've written.

Or maybe the previous poster read the list of editors here:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/about/company/contact/

If we're talking about gender imbalance in companies I think The Reg should include themselves, the list of names contacts an overabundance of male-sounding names.

Re: @AC

Bad law

It's almost as if the politicians, (you know, our incompetent "betters"), wanted to divide and conquer by writing such bad law.

If they had instead chosen to write a law that mandated companies provided a comparison of pay differential in functional areas, eg finance, HR, engineering etc then it would be possible to compare apples with apples and meaningfully address any disparities.

Re: Bad law

The politicians could have mandated that in order for meaningful analysis of gender pay differences, employees would be required to publish the salaries of their employees. This doesn't necessarily mean publicly, but internally so employees don't just have to take their company's word on the statistics. Currently, employees have no concrete evidence.

And I mean the salaries / benefits of ALL their employees, not just those over x hundred thousand pounds. Similarly for companies with less than 250 employees. After all, don't differences matter for lower paid staff, or those in small(er) companies? Or is this not really about equality?

Popcorn

There are some articles that shouldn't be written on a Friday...where's my popcorn?

Jake had it right earlier - it's not why are women paid less than men, it's why are women over-represented in jobs that pay less, and men over-represented in jobs that pay more? Why are so many women nurses and not doctors?

Technology (in the UK at least) is a white male industry - why's that? And most of the women in this building at least are analysts and administrators, therefore paid less than the architects and specialists - why's that? To the best of my knowledge, the female analysts get paid the same as the male ones (experience and expertise considered), so we're legally compliant.

And it's not motherhood that does it. There are two mothers in this building and they probably have the first and third highest salaries of all the women. But the fact that I know that probably tells you how few women there are here, in a company that pays good salaries in a generally well paid industry.

Re: Popcorn

"Why are so many women nurses and not doctors?"

Nurses for obvious reason, its not a job men have wanted, it would mean getting the piss taken out of them and the pay is laughable. There is no lack of role models given Casualty has been running with Charlie since the beginning of time.

But, why do you think there is not many Female doctors?

There was a peak of 61% Female medical students in 2003, these are now flushing through the system the prediction is they will be the majority between 2017-2022 so they could already be the Majority.

Re: Popcorn

The perils of imprecise comment...

"Doctors" is a wide group and yes, pretty close to equal numbers of genders (and likely to hit a female majority) across the whole. But even in that single profession, there is a clear gender pay gap http://careers.bmj.com/careers/advice/The_gender_pay_gap%3A_female_doctors_still_earn_a_third_less_than_male_doctors

Do I know why? No, but I might take a guess that there's a high male majority at the senior consultant level which is where the high earners are mostly located. And probably a female majority in those newcomer "junior" roles from that 21st century trainee intake. The majority of GPs that I know are also female but that could just be an oddity of my social circle - GPs get paid less than consultants as well.

Nursing pay might be "laughable" but there's still thousands of people who want to do it. Why do women want that job, and men don't?

I'm just old enough to remember an MD openly stating that women were employable in Personnel or as accounts clerks or secretaries, but the "proper" jobs were only really for men. I'm about half way through my working life and that was a few years into it. So that's half your female workforce having started in a world where they were told that there was no point even thinking jobs with career prospects and pay packets to match. It's a good job plenty of us are bloody minded women who went, nah, I'm better than that.

One of the problems is that as soon as pay is equalised, the gap will reappear due to pay rises linked to performance reviews. This may even result in the women getting paid more than the men when it happens.

About 12% of companies have a pro-female pay bias. For example Smirnoff.

I saw abother study last year that showed British females aged 22 to 30 earn more than British males aged 22 to 30, which could be seen as progress but equally could be seen as dirty old men employing sexually eligible young women.

A meaningless analysis

Unless seniority, hours worked and level of work are controlled for, this is just propaganda. People with the same level of seniority doing the same jobs are paid the same by law, regardless as to their sex. In that sense there is no pay gap. However, there is an earnings gap due to different career choices and number of hours worked.

I am not surprised at BT as I believe they actively discriminate against men. They use automated psychological testing after job applications which will eliminate candidates before a human being has even looked at their CV. Upon discussing the answers they wanted, it seems that they are actively selecting against male brains regardless of otherwise skill or experience.

Re: Just got to say...

"Might be a chance of saving this country yet.", HA no. Rational people do not get to either make or repeal laws only put up with them.

Politicians make laws only in order to gain votes and so headline catching nonsense first then new laws to address non-existent issues is the norm.

Thus we have laws that demand that members of group A gets a job over everyone else irrespective of ability then any investigation is going to be based upon already biased data and hence of no real value.

Also articles of the type "group A still not getting more than everyone else by any biased metric" are by default nonsense but they get read by those who have chosen a side in this non-existent arguement.

So time to face the facts that "the best person for the job" does not always get it or pay to match their value, and that any additional bias introduced only compounds the problem.

Forcing companies to employ people purely because of their membership of some group unrelated to the work is by definition bias and further a tax on society.

In summary, real equality is a myth, every person got their job/status for reasons that seperated them from their competition even when it is only the throw of a dice. Attempting to increase the presence of any group over another via legislation is just pandering to the paranoid for political gain.

Those that feel discriminated against would be better showing they are superior through their pay the price.

The gender pay gap does not compare the same job roles because it would be illegal to pay women with the same jobs less, which can make it a contentious measure in some industries.

In other words, in an industry where most of the women are working in customer service roles and secretarial pools because there is a definite deficit of women who've bothered to get the education needed to work in the higher paying roles of the field, we should expect a gender pay gap.

This is not discrimination by tech companies. This is the result of the lack of women who have a STEM education. That is very much a problem that needs to be addressed, but the responsibility for it does not fall on the shoulders of these tech companies. You should be looking to schools, parents, and peers who are - more unintentionally than not I suspect - discouraging young women from taking STEM majors.

Working in tech...

There's 1 female working in 1 of our tech teams below mine. I know she's not paid the least or the most.

There's no females working in my tech team. Its a higher tier team and thus paid more.

There's no females working in the tech team above mine who are paid 50% more roughly than my team.

There are a couple of higher profile, and so better paid positions leading technical teams, filled by very capable and highly qualified females.

As a hiring manager I've had around 50 CVs in the last 6-12 months. There was 1 female CV amongst them from someone with no qualifications but some experience (not appropriate experience). If you want to drill down even further I'd say 80% of the CVs I receive are from Ethnic Minorities of middle eastern descent.

My feeling is that for some fields the GPG statistic is a bit of a blunt instrument.

Perhaps

It's because women are on average 18% less efficient? In which case, I guess the pay gap is appropriate.

How do we now prevent unfair discrimination again men in the tech sector?

I can already see my company looking to promote women into higher paid roles to get the gap reduced. In some cases, the female candidate is a worthy candidate and would have got that promotion anyway, but on other cases, it's purely to narrow the pay gap.

Also, in tech engineering sector, 75% of grads are male, it's pretty much guaranteed that males will end up filling the higher paid roles.

Missing the point really.

I am getting pretty fed up with the focus on a very narrow field as the problem.

Using what is essentially Math there is a different solution to the disproportion.

Say we have 100 students who are going to higher education. I think currently the ratio is 55 female and 45 male but trying to find consistent numbers is almost impossible other than it being more female by at least 5%.

If we have 20 male and 5 female students going to into STEM we have an imbalance there which we could try and fix by pushing more females that way. The problem is that there will be a lot of competition for the spaces which is known by both views of the gender disparity to be less hospitable for women.

Healthcare for instance has a massive imbalance. The workforce is 80-20 including all the technical staff and nursing for example has a 90-10 split. If more men could be encouraged to go into nursing they'd have to come from somewhere since people going for further education doesn't just magically appear but redistribute so STEM would by definition end up with less men applying making room for more women.

I have listened to people trying to explain why their young ones who clearly have a great aptitude for computer science should study something else and I think much of it boils down to "it's something weird I don't understand".

Re: Missing the point really.

Why does anyone have to "fix" anything - it's up to the individuals concerned. Pushing people into careers they're not interested in or responsibilities they (and / or sometimes their partners) don't want doesn't make sense. Eg nurses.